I'm the only guy using Ubuntu in a couple of startup projects. It's interesting how people react to that. Windows users thinks I'm a communist. Other "True Linuxer(TM)" distro users thinks I'm like the typical image they associate to Mac users (a fancy guy that don't know about the existence of shell, etc, because a "True Linuxer(TM)" compile everything). And Mac users thinks I'm a smelly hacker.

Try Canonical Unity. I never liked Gnome, while I was OK with GTK programs. Then with Unity, I'm pretty fine. It has good defaults. I was a KDE user since version 2, loved 3, but I faced annoying bugs, even with the latest 4 releases (like systray icons leaking memory, every KDE upgrade disabling Oxygen theme, icon-only taskbar freeze issues, etc). Then, after Ubuntu started this own shell, I gave a chance in 12.04, which was fine, and a way improved in 14.04. I.e., while some people left Ubuntu due change to Unity, I started to use it for this reason.

I have a degree in Computer Science, and I'm in software since 1998. If you do a proper refactoring, at the end of the day, you'll get a much better code, probably better performance, and now that you have more background in the subject, a smaller code. If you're using a code repository, so you'll never lose anything. And if you have a bug regression always coming back, you need a proper test/spec to cover that. So, refactor is really good when: you have a way improved background in the subject, code repository (i.e., history), and tests to cover the recurrent bugs and the main features.

Nice try, but English got widely used after World War II, due the economical influence of USA over the globe. Like all the previous widely used languages. It's all about economics. Not being "that cool".

I just did the opposite: switched to Firefox because Chrome was too resource intensive. And Firefox, at least in Linux, follows the system look and feel. For Youtube, I just disabled Flash (at all), so I have the same HTML5 player.

"Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."

The core is broken. While you have namespaces and patterns to apply inr your code, PHP core functions still don't have namespaces, class, don't even have a pattern in their names/parameters (to not blame the real lack of classes for strings, by example). This only to start. If you want to get deeper: http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012...

But they said that after analysis of customer data, they've found most of users don't need all the letter in keyboard :P

I think you're wrong to suppose that an open source product will be bug free. What an open source software will provide is a high chance that bugs will be discovered soonner and in high number than the closed ones (as you'll have less people watching the code and most important, with less passion).

... will be the same year on Linux on desktop. I.e., it never comes :)

While the kernel can be live patched, still some fundamentals pieces will lack live patch in the desktop, like X.org and libc. Ok, reboot a desktop is not that terrible task and not inconvenient like for a server. But it'd be nice to have.

No. Modern aviation, satellites, all these were direct improved by NASA and could not came from other R&D projects.

Yes, and just to remind that a lot of modern devices and technologies we have in all places now came from R&D from space programs: wireless devices, technology that is now used in devices for detection of heart problems came from the water detection devices used by NASA, the current glass lenses manufacturing process, a lot of the modern aviation technology (including runway, the tower and the airplane), and some minor ones, like modern running shoes, infrared thermometer, the foam used in those "NASA pillows", drinking fountain, modern smoke detectors (that don't trigger with false positives), etc. So it's not "just that scientists want to science".

How will they feel when discover that government and anyone with low hacking skills can watch the baby too?

Oh, right, sorry.